Investigation Into General Narrows Look at E-Mail

WASHINGTON — Two and a half weeks after Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta announced an inquiry into e-mail exchanges between Gen. John R. Allen of the Marines and a socialite in Tampa, Fla., some 15 investigators working seven days a week in the Pentagon inspector general’s office have narrowed their focus to 60 to 70 e-mails that “bear a fair amount of scrutiny,” a defense official said.

The official did not disclose the content of the e-mails, but senior Pentagon officials have described the voluminous correspondence between General Allen, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, and the socialite, Jill Kelley, as potentially “inappropriate communication.” Law enforcement officials say the e-mails number in the hundreds and cover a period of two and a half years starting in 2010, when General Allen was the deputy commander of Central Command, based in Tampa.

The investigation, which is delaying and could derail General Allen’s appointment to be the NATO supreme allied commander in Europe, is on a fast track but is unlikely to be completed before the end of the year. Investigations of senior officers in the inspector general’s office usually take about seven months on average, although normally there are only two or three investigators assigned to a case.

The defense official, who asked not to be named because of the nature of the inquiry, said investigators were trying to determine whether the e-mails violated Defense Department policy, government regulations or military law. They were discovered in the course of an F.B.I. investigation into anonymous e-mails to Ms. Kelley warning her to stay away from David H. Petraeus, then the C.I.A. director. The F.B.I. found that the e-mails had been sent by Paula Broadwell, Mr. Petraeus’s biographer; he admitted to having had an affair with Ms. Broadwell and resigned on Nov. 9.

The e-mails between General Allen and Ms. Kelley were sent to the Pentagon by the F.B.I. on Nov. 11. “They just forwarded the evidence,” the official said, referring to the F.B.I. “People have to go through and decide if they fit one of three potential violations.” Those violations include misconduct, which could range from inappropriate language on a government computer to adultery, prohibited under military law; more than an incidental use of government property for personal matters; and security breaches.

Photo

Gen. John R. Allen testifying before the House Armed Services Committee in March. He is being investigated over e-mails he sent to Jill Kelley, who was also an acquaintance of David H. Petraeus.Credit
Alex Wong/Getty Images

The defense official said there was no evidence so far that there had been security violations. General Allen, who is in Kabul planning the drawdown of American forces from Afghanistan, is cooperating with the investigation and has said through associates that he did not commit adultery. The inquiry does not appear to have progressed to interviews with General Allen, 58, who is married and the father of two, or Ms. Kelley, 37, the wife of a cancer surgeon and the mother of three.

Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., who has been nominated to succeed General Allen as part of a regular military rotation, is expected to be confirmed by the Senate before the end of the year and to be in Kabul by February. General Allen is expected to return to the United States at that time, but it is unclear what he will do.

There have been conflicting accounts of the nature of the e-mails between him and Ms. Kelley. A law enforcement official has described some of them as sexually explicit. Pentagon officials briefed on the matter say they have been told that half a dozen are embarrassing. But General Allen’s associates say they are innocuous and contain little beyond language like “you’re a sweetheart.”

Although Ms. Kelley’s e-mail correspondence with General Allen has not been made public, dozens of her e-mails to Mayor Bob Buckhorn of Tampa have been released under Florida’s public record laws and refer to her friendship with both General Allen and Mr. Petraeus.

A year ago, after inviting the mayor to a birthday party for one of her children, she added a casual P.S.: “I’ll be in DC this weekend with Petraeus, but let’s set up a double date when I return!” Last January, she wrote to a mayoral aide, “I’m up in DC having dinner tonight with Gen. Petraeus and Gen. John Allen.”

In March, she wrote to Mr. Buckhorn that “I just got off the phone with Gen. Allen.” The next day she let him know that she was working to prevent a local D.J. from carrying out his threat to deep-fry a Koran on the air.

“I have Petraeus & Allen both emailing me about getting this dealt with,” she wrote on March 7. She told the mayor she had also been involved in the effort to prevent a Florida pastor from burning a Koran in 2011.

The e-mails show that Ms. Kelley also socialized with other senior military officers. She wrote that she had seen the mayor “at Gen. Mattis’ home,” an evident reference to a gathering at the Tampa house of Gen. James N. Mattis, who as the head of Central Command oversees all military operations in the Middle East. Several messages refer to Vice Adm. Robert S. Harward, the deputy commander of Central Command, who was the host of a ceremony last April honoring Ms. Kelley for her volunteer assistance to the military.

On Tuesday, Abbe D. Lowell, a lawyer for Ms. Kelley and her husband, Scott, accused federal authorities of leaking Ms. Kelley’s name to the news media and asked a federal prosecutor in Tampa whether the government was investigating the role any federal officials played in the matter. “All they did to receive this attention was to let law enforcement know that they had been the subjects of inappropriate and potentially threatening behavior by someone else,” Mr. Lowell wrote in a letter to the prosecutor, W. Stephen Muldrow.

The investigation of General Allen is being run by a retired Army colonel, Marguerite Garrison, a deputy inspector general who oversees all investigations of senior military officers and who ran two previous inquiries that found fault with top commanders this year.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

In August, Ms. Garrison’s investigators found that Gen. William E. Ward, the former head of the United States Africa Command, had lavishly overspent on official trips, including for long stays at luxury hotels, and that he had used his staff to chauffeur his wife to a department store and a spa. This month, Ms. Garrison’s investigators found that Adm. James G. Stavridis, the current NATO commander, had improperly used a military aircraft to fly with his wife to an exclusive party with winemakers and wine connoisseurs in Burgundy, France.

General Ward was ordered to repay the government $82,000 and was forced by Mr. Panetta to retire as a lieutenant general. But the Navy secretary, Ray Mabus, has cleared Admiral Stavridis of any personal misconduct, and he remains on the job.

Ms. Garrison said in an interview on Tuesday that her job was only to investigate, not to make a determination about the outcome.

“I feel good that our report was thorough, fair and that we presented what we thought were the facts,” she said, referring to the investigation of Admiral Stavridis. “Secretary Mabus took what action he deemed appropriate.”

Ms. Garrison’s office, which has 24 investigators to look into complaints against top defense and military officials, is a small part of the Pentagon’s 1,600-member inspector general office, which more frequently investigates contract fraud and conducts audits.

Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on November 28, 2012, on Page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Investigation Into General Narrows Look At E-Mail. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe